Methane leakage from biogas facilities underscores the importance of doing things right.

I feel like I spend a lot of time talking about what it means to “get it right” on the environment. Solar panels are great, but less so if the silicon mining destroys habitat, or the copper mines and refineries for the power cables poison the land around them. We can’t just replace fossil fuels with other power sources and change nothing else. We have to change not just how we generate and use power, but also how we extract resources, how we process them, how we transport them, and how we dispose of the waste generated in every part of that system.

Climate change isn’t the only major environmental problem we face; it’s just the most urgent one. We need to stop being so sloppy in general, but you’d think that folks involved in renewable energy production in particular would understand that. Unfortunately, it turns out that biogas facilities, while certainly more renewable than fossil sources of gas, are still leaking a lot of methane into the atmosphere.

The new Imperial study, published in One Earth journal, found that supply chains for biomethane and biogas release more than twice as much methane as the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s previous estimation. It also reveals that 62 per cent of these leaks were concentrated in a small number of facilities and pieces of equipment within the chain, which they call ‘super-emitters’, though methane was found to be released at every stage.

The researchers say urgent attention is needed to fix the methane leaks, and knowing precisely where the majority of them are happening will help production plants to do so.

Lead author of the study Dr Semra Bakkaloglu, of Imperial’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Sustainable Gas Institute, said: “Biomethane and biogas are great candidates for renewable and clean energy sources, but they can also emit methane. For them to really help mitigate the warming effects of energy use, we must act urgently to reduce their emissions.

“We want to encourage the continued use of biogas and biomethane as a renewable resource by taking the necessary actions to tackle methane emissions.”

The researchers note that compared to the oil and gas industry, the biomethane industry suffers from poorly designed and managed production facilities as well as a lack of investment for modernisation, operation, and monitoring. Because oil and natural gas supply chains have been primarily operated by large companies with huge resources for decades, they have been able to invest more in leak detection and repair.

Honestly, I’m reluctant to blame the people involved in biogas production. This seems to be yet another symptom of the broader systemic disease – people in power don’t take climate change seriously. So of course biogas doesn’t get the funding it needs. As much as I wish it were otherwise, it always comes back to politics. This is just another small part of the massive change we urgently need. The only real upside is that every small part we deal with, will both reduce the size of the task ahead, and make other aspects of that task easier.

Dr Bakkaloglu said: “To prevent biogas methane emissions negating the overall benefits of biogas use, urgent attention is needed including continuous monitoring of biogas supply chains. We believe that with the proper detection, measurement, and repair techniques, all emissions can be avoided. We need better regulations, continuous emission measurements, and close collaboration with biogas plant operators in order to address methane emissions and meet Paris Agreement targets.”

“Given the growth in biomethane due to national decarbonisation strategies, urgent efforts are needed for the biomethane supply chain to address not only methane emissions but also the sustainability of biomethane.”

Co-author Dr Jasmin Cooper, also of the Sustainable Gas Institute and Department of Chemical Engineering, said: “Addressing the fundamental design issues and investment problems within the biofuel and methane industry would be a good starting point for stopping these leaks and preventing more from arising.”

The researchers are now focusing on the super-emitters within supply chains to better understand how to reduce them using the best available technologies.

As always, it’s good that we know about this. I think I’ve been advocating for biogas as part of our new energy “portfolio” for longer than I’ve been talking about the whole “getting it right” thing. This tech means that every human population can have a reliable source of flammable gas that’s proportional to the number of people feeding into the sewage system. I hope the leak problem gets fixed soon, because I don’t think we can afford to squander useful energy, and I know we can’t afford to be letting more methane into the atmosphere.

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When it comes to flooding in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region, hurricanes barely rate

When I was a kid, the most exciting weather event I encountered was Hurricane Bob. If memory serves, we went inland when it came, and I think we were staying with a family friend. I remember seeing the dramatic footage of floating cars along the Massachusetts coast. I remember intense winds, and the surreal calm of the eye passing overhead. It cemented hurricanes in my mind as Serious Business, and nothing I’ve seen since then has dissuaded me of that view.

I also remember Nor’easters, with their cutting cold and violent winds, but we never left town to avoid one of those. To me, they were exciting events, that often knocked out the power for a while, which meant we got to light everything with candles. It turns out that for all the attention paid to hurricanes, in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, almost all coastal flooding events come from non-tropical storms.

The most recent paper was published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology and compared extreme coastal flooding events from tropical cyclones and mid-latitude weather systems in the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays from 1980-2019.

Callahan looked at the past 40 years of measurements from several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tide gauges in the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. This helped him to quantify the storm surge — the rising sea as the result of atmospheric pressure and winds associated with a storm — from these large weather events.

While coastal flooding from tropical weather events tend to get a lot of media attention — and actually have a higher average surge level — Callahan said that midlatitude weather events can produce flood levels just as severe and occur much more frequently in the Mid-Atlantic.

“About 85 to 90% of our coastal flooding events here in the Mid-Atlantic come from the midlatitude events; they don’t come from the tropical cyclones and the hurricanes,” said Callahan. “You can get strong nor’easters that have just as high coastal inundation levels and cause just as much — if not more — damage than tropical cyclones.”

One of the reasons that the midlatitude events can cause so much damage is that, unlike the tropical systems that commonly impact coastal areas in the southeastern United States before hitting the Mid-Atlantic, the intensity and size of midlatitude events are most difficult to forecast and can strengthen quickly without much warning. Also, while tropical systems usually peak and are well-formed storms before reaching the Mid-Atlantic, a nor’easter can strengthen quickly right on or just off-shore of the region. Additionally, mid-latitude systems are often bigger in size, move slower, and remain over our region for longer periods of time.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Hurricanes are huge, easily visible, move over the planet almost like some kind of entity. They make for great television, in part because you can spend weeks tracking them from formation – usually off the coast of western Africa – until they dissipate. The disparity in coverage and perception seems to be from a combination of the incentives of our news entities, and the nature of the storms.

Because they happen frequently in the cold season — from November to March — not much attention is paid to how nor’easters cause coastal flooding. Instead, more attention is paid to the amount of ice and snow and wind that the nor’easters bring and not as much focus is on the coast.

“Our attention is diverted between these other impacts or factors of these storms in the winter and spring, but this is where most of our coastal flooding comes into play,” said Callahan.

I also have to imagine that flooding is more dangerous. It’s possible that the colder water means fewer chemical reactions, so less of that danger, but the risk of hypothermia is astronomical in those conditions, and all that ice in the floodwater can also do direct kinetic damage to things. I’d be inclined to think the increased frequency is responsible for the higher numbers from mid-latitude storms, but the authors also point out that even if we’re just looking at the biggest disasters, hurricanes don’t even make the halfway mark.

Of the top 10 largest coastal flooding events in the Mid-Atlantic, tropical weather systems account for only 30-45% in the Delaware and upper Chesapeake Bays and 40-45% in the lower Chesapeake Bay. If you expand out further, tropical systems make up approximately 10-15% of all coastal flooding events.

The authors go on to make the shocking prediction that as sea levels rise, coastal flooding will get worse.

I think this is a valuable lesson in how to think about climate change. We’re still living in the society that created this problem, and that is trying to avoid solving it. The things we’re shown aren’t always the things at which we need to be looking. That’s true in all areas of life, of course, but I think it’s particularly true with climate change. A lot of what’s happening is invisible to us until it’s too late to do anything but fight for survival. Science lets us see that stuff, but we’re actively discouraged from looking closely. There’s a miasma of propaganda that makes it hard to tell what’s going on, and I’m worried that that’s going to lead us to overlook some pretty important things

It’s good to have this information, and I hope more people become aware of it. In terms of overlooking things, all we can really do is pay attention and, as always, organize.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Philosophy Tube: The Social Contract

So I foolishly took on too much today, and while I did get a lot of things done, a publication-ready blog post wasn’t one of them. Now it’s a little after midnight, I’m burned out, and my neighbor’s small white dog is barking under my window. I think it’s time to cut my losses, and balance things better tomorrow.

That said, I’d feel bad leaving it at that, so I’ll share the video I’m currently watching. So far it is both entertaining and informative, and I think it touches on some important issues. Philosophy tube is generally well worth your time.

Sea life in this region survived a past warming event. Here’s how we can get the fuckers this time around.

I looked into this research because the headline was about how life in the Gulf of Mexico seemed to survive a warming-driven marine mass extinction 56 million years ago.

“Oh neat,” I thought. “Another bit of research showing is how we can help the biosphere weather the shitstorm we’ve created!”

And then I read the second sentence.

An ancient bout of global warming 56 million years ago that acidified oceans and wiped-out marine life had a milder effect in the Gulf of Mexico, where life was sheltered by the basin’s unique geology – according to research by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).

Published in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, the findings not only shed light on an ancient mass extinction, but could also help scientists determine how current climate change will affect marine life and aid in efforts to find deposits of oil and gas.

Oh. Oh yeah. We live in the Bad Timeline, where Irony came to die.

The research itself is interesting. Petroleum geology, as I understand it, is concerned with the most effective ways to find oil and gas deposits. This often means studying the stuff found when drilling, and then looking for those same things in other places to find new places to drill. This is one of those areas where the pyramid scheme of capitalism is creating what I would consider to be an ethical quandary for those scientists who’ve found profitable employment in service to corporate interests. We’re now at the point where an article is simultaneously studying how global warming caused a mass extinction in the past, while also working to accelerate the rate at which the planet is currently warming.

“Be sure to get the newest issue of Mass Murderers Monthly, where we study past and present mass murder, and use that knowledge to ensure the continuation of this noble tradition!”

“This event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM is very important to understand because it’s pointing towards a very powerful, albeit brief, injection of carbon into the atmosphere that’s akin to what’s happening now,” he said.

Cunningham and his collaborators investigated the ancient period of global warming and its impact on marine life and chemistry by studying a group of mud, sand, and limestone deposits found across the Gulf.

They sifted through rock chips brought up during oil and gas drilling and found an abundance of microfossils from radiolarians – a type of plankton— that had surprisingly thrived in the Gulf during the ancient global warming. They concluded that a steady supply of river sediments and circulating ocean waters had helped radiolarians and other microorganisms survive even while Earth’s warming climate became more hostile to life.

“In a lot of places, the ocean was absolutely uninhabitable for anything,” said UTIG biostratigrapher Marcie Purkey Phillips. “But we just don’t seem to see as severe an effect in the Gulf of Mexico as has been seen elsewhere.”

How nice for the ancient Gulf of Mexico. This time the region is littered with abandoned oil wells that will do their part to make the Gulf more hostile to life in exciting new ways! Still, it’s useful to consider what made the Gulf something of a refuge from an ongoing mass extinction.

The reasons for that go back to geologic forces reshaping North America at the time. About 20 million years before the ancient global warming, the rise of the Rocky Mountains had redirected rivers into the northwest Gulf of Mexico – a tectonic shift known as the Laramide uplift – sending much of the continent’s rivers through what is now Texas and Louisiana into the Gulf’s deeper waters.

When global warming hit and North America became hotter and wetter, the rain-filled rivers fire-hosed nutrients and sediments into the basin, providing plenty of nutrients for phytoplankton and other food sources for the radiolarians.

The findings also confirm that the Gulf of Mexico remained connected to the Atlantic Ocean and the salinity of its waters never reached extremes – a question that until now had remained open. According to Phillips, the presence of radiolarians alone – which only thrive in nutrient-rich water that’s no saltier than seawater today – confirmed that the Gulf’s waters did not become too salty. Cunningham added that the organic content of sediments decreased farther from the coast, a sign that deep currents driven by the Atlantic Ocean were sweeping the basin floor.

Basically, the factors that saved life in the region 56 million years ago, will almost certainly not save them now. Not only have some of the rivers changed their flow (the Colorado used to empty into the Gulf of Mexico), but we also don’t have a particularly sustainable relationship with fresh water, and the Mississippi Delta dead zone created by agricultural runoff is pretty much the inverse of the life-giving effect the researchers attribute to ancient rivers.

As always, I’m glad to know more. This is knowledge we can use, if we ever get around to doing something about our looming extinction. I also think this is evidence that if we do really start changing things, it will likely start improving ecological resilience downstream (literally, in this case).

When we talk about climate action, there’s a lot of stuff considered low-hanging fruit. Improving energy efficiency and putting solar panels along highways and railways are a couple examples. I think that we should also be expecting to take an active role in ecosystem management, even if it’s only out of self-preservation. As much as possible, we should be dong things that will make future action easier, and that will buy more time for that action. If we can figure out a way to stop polluting and draining our rivers (like maybe by changing how we grow food?), the rivers will start doing some of our work for us.

Unfortunately, none of that will matter until we stop actively making the problem worse. It’s maddening that people are still forging ahead, looking for new places to drill, even as they’re learning about how the conditions that industry is currently creating caused a mass extinction. It honestly feels like I’m watching people who’ve been completely brainwashed, to the point where they’re not even capable of considering that they need to stop.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Video: Disinvestment is class war

It’s not just the private sector that works to funnel money to the top. The government also plays its role in ensuring that poverty is miserable and dangerous enough to make people desperate for any wage they can get, no matter how bad the working conditions. It’s not a coincidence that the bipartisan response to people refusing to go back to work was to cut unemployment assistance, and try to use poverty to force people to go back. The United States, as a rule, treats poverty as a moral failing. Even as it’s made impossible to escape, poverty itself is seen as justification for mistreatment of poor people. It also justifies poor working conditions and poverty wages, because if they “deserved more” they’d have better jobs. It’s a vicious circle designed to deflect attention away from the simple fact that poverty is a policy choice.

 

Beyond parody…

We live in the shittiest, most obnoxious timeline.

For those who can’t see, the image in the top tweet is two images pf a bomber dropping bombs. The first, labeled “Republicans”, is just a photo of a bomber. The second, labeled “Democrats” is the same bomber, with a rainbow, a BLM sign, and a “Yes she can!” sign photoshopped onto them. The bottom tweet is from the United States Marine Corp, and it’s a digital camo helmet with six rifle shells held by a band. The bullets are painted with rainbow colors.

It reminds me of a folk song I heard a while back, pointing out the absurdity of the military’s resistance to having specifically homosexual soldiers killing poor villagers for the U.S. empire, except now instead we’re supposed to celebrate that. It is progress, in a way. The advancement of civil rights, even within a flawed society, is 100% a win, and we should be glad that it’s gotten to the point where the marines of all organizations wants to be seen as supporting Pride.

But holy shit does this feel like a grim commentary on our society.

Video: Humanity is not a parasite, and why we need social ecology

With fascism and climate change both looming large on the world stage, I think it’s important that we counter the narratives of ecofascism specifically. It’s not currently the dominant form of fascism, but the second fascists see environmentalism as a path to power, they will try to use it. Worse, the rhetoric to support a turn like that is already deeply embedded in society. Talk about overpopulation, humanity being “the real virus”, doom being inevitable, or (and I can’t imagine why this one has been used less in recent years), “we need a new plague”.

This is why a number of people have said that the only thing more dangerous than conservative denial and obstruction will be when conservatives decide to admit that climate change is real, and to impose their solutions to it. St Andrewism is someone I think you should keep an eye on in general, and this video is no exception. We need to get better at adapting our population centers to work with their surrounding ecosystems, not against them.

 

Video: Let’s talk about armed teachers

After 9/11, amid things like the Patriot Act and the new “War on Terror”, there came a bill that really caught my attention as a teenage Quaker – the Universal Military Service and Training Act of 2001. This was a proposed law that never made it to Bush’s desk (thankfully), that would have required all male citizens of age to enlist for basic training (including Pentagon-approved history lessons) and a term of service. The authors of the bill very kindly provided for contentious objectors to opt out of weapons training and direct combat roles. Needless to say, this freaked me out. I think it freaked out a lot of people, and I feel quite certain that if conditions allow, the idea will come up again.

So that’s something to look forward to…

Another way in which conservatives are trying to create the society in Starship Troopers is proposing that all teachers be armed. As usual, Beau of the Fifth Column has some words worth hearing on the subject, and on what that might actually look like.

This is not a solution. The problem is, that’s not going to stop conservatives from trying it. If you haven’t realized by now that reality is no barrier to the laws they want to make, then I’m afraid you’re very behind on your political education. The fact that they’re happy to legislate based on how they think reality ought to work, makes me think we need to consider that they’ll keep pushing for armed teachers until they get armed teachers. And if it comes to that, the scenario Beau discusses isn’t the only way that could go. There’s another possibility for what this could look like, and it’s a very, very grim one:

They could start requiring that all teachers either be veterans, or have completed basic training, or some other government-sanctioned combat training program.

At the end of the day, conservatives – and that’s not a category limited to Republicans – want to control things. They want hierarchies, and they want those hierarchies to be enforced. The tools they use for this – police, debt, redlining, etc. – are varied and sometimes fairly subtle, but they all seem to aim at creating a populace that will do as they’re told, and won’t rock the boat. It seems to me that this push to arm teachers may be closer than we realize to requiring teachers to undergo formal military training.

Do I need to make the case for why that would be a bad thing? Do I need to explain who would be most hurt by this path?

The people of Atlanta are standing up for themselves, because their government won’t.

I revisit the subject of urban greenery on a fairly regular basis. My vision of a better world still involves cities, but I want those cities to be integrated with the surrounding ecosystems as much as possible. Rather than being a sort of desert landscape, we could have cities that could almost feel like living in a forest. Beyond the mental and physical health benefits, there’s also the fact that plants tend to lower the temperature around them, rather than simply absorbing heat the way asphalt and concrete do. As the climate warms, the amount of plant life in and around cities is going to make a big difference in how hot they get. To that end, we should be both advocating for new green spaces, and defending those that currently exist, whether or not that existence is “official”.

I add that last bit because there’s just such a fight going on right now in Atlanta, GA. A prison farm that used convict slaves to grow food for Atlanta’s prison population closed down in 1989, and has since been increasingly consumed by forest. That’s all well and good, but there are a couple problems. The land is still owned by the city, and it’s apparently been used as a dumping ground, and a firing range for Atlanta police. The early stages of a new development project have begun, which will clear away a big chunk of the forest in order to make a sort of “dummy city” for the cops to train in.

Because as we all know, what we need is for law enforcement to become more militarized.

That would be bad enough, but unfortunately there’s more to the story. I’ll just quote the folks working to defend the forest:

ATLANTA IS A CITY IN A FOREST

We have the highest percentage of tree canopy of any major metropolitan area in America. Our canopy is the main factor in ensuring Atlanta’s resiliency in the face of climate change. The forest in Southeast Atlanta is home to wetlands that filter rainwater and prevent flooding. It is also one of the last breeding grounds for many amphibians in the region, as well as an important migration site for wading birds.

The history of this particular land is deeply scarred. In the 1800s shortly after the land was stolen from Muscogee Creek peoples, it was used as a plantation. In the early 1900s, a prison farm was opened where inmates were forced to perform unpaid agricultural labor, marking the rebranding of slavery into for profit prison labor. The Atlanta Police Department currently uses this hallowed ground as a firing range.

This forest is at risk of destruction as the police and Hollywood make plans to pave over Atlanta’s largest remaining green space.

The Atlanta Police Department seeks to turn 300 acres of forest into a tactical training compound featuring a mock city. This project was recently announced to the shock of community members who had been given no opportunity to weigh in on the proposal. The entire process has been shadier than the forest itself.

Intrenchment Creek is an existing public park adjacent to the Prison Farm. Dekalb County seeks to swap this land with Blackhall Studios, a major film production company. Blackhall wants to clear cut 170 acres of forest to develop into an airport and erect the largest sound stage in America. This project would cement Atlanta as the new Hollywood, making the cost of living in our city outrageous.

We refuse to let our forest be bulldozed in favor of the police and sold out to Hollywood. There are many forms of action and advocacy to be taken. This is a broad, decentralized, autonomous movement. Get involved in whatever ways move you. Take a walk in the forest with your friends.

Forests and other wild spaces are vital public resources, and should be protected. I’ve talked before about how enraging it is that we’re all forced to just go through life like nothing’s happening, while the rest of the biosphere collapses around us, and a tiny number of the most evil people on the planet use their obscene wealth and power to continue the destruction of everything we hold dear. It’s difficult to know how to discuss these things for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I’m not always sure where the boundaries of legality are when it comes to discussing what to do about unjust laws. I’m very glad that movements like this go out of their way to avoid harming any of the people they’re trying to stop, but I also find it encouraging that they’re clearly unwilling to abide by a rule of law that would see us all die to maintain the lifestyles of the rich and powerful.

The reality is that if we are going to survive, we need to protect every halfway-healthy ecosystem we can. That may be less urgent than ending fossil fuel extraction and use, but not by a whole lot.

I was talking to someone on Twitter the other day about what I do and don’t want for the world, and because it’s so easy to miscommunicate on a platform like that I ended up doing a brief rundown of what changes I think humanity needs to make. It’s… It’s a lot. There’s so much work to do, it’s hard to wrap my head around. I talked a while back about the problem of chemical pollution, separate from climate change, and that’s something that we can help by stopping pollution at the source, but I think it’d be a very good idea for us to do what we can to actively clean stuff up. I’m no doctor, but maybe it’s not good that there’s plastic and other shit in our blood? That’s going to mean cleaning up old dumping grounds like the area in the Atlanta forest, and cleaning up what could be centuries of mine waste, and battlegrounds all over the world, and sunken ships, and all the while the richest people on the planet want to keep making that monumental task bigger.

At what point is it self defense to obstruct this kind of “development”? At what point is it self defense to force the closure of a factory that’s poisoning your water?

As with white supremacy, the United States has responded to these questions with bluster and resentful concessions at best, and outright denial at worst. The reality is that our current structure of laws and norms has always devalued life, and now it seems poised to simply make life impossible for large portions of the planet’s population.

Part of the reason I favor the approach of local organizing networked to allow for national or global action, is that while we face huge, planetary problems, their manifestations are local in nature. Different communities have different needs, and the people on the ground – as in Atlanta – best know what the stakes are for themselves. The same was true with the opposition to the Keystone pipeline extension – activists came from all across the country to help, and they put themselves under the leadership of the Indigenous people whose land they were trying to defend.

People in Atlanta are fighting to do what their city’s government will not, and preserve the ecosystem that gives Atlanta its best hope of a better future as the climate warms. I support what they’re doing, and I hope to see more actions like it in the coming years. Maybe I’m just a bit too cynical, but I don’t see our “leaders” doing anything real any time soon, and we’re short on time.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!